


don't look back in anger

by topnewt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dark Sam, Gen, Heavy Angst, Psychic Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:16:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5007919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topnewt/pseuds/topnewt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s November 2nd, so something terrible is going to happen. A gorgeous woman with blonde curls and an irrevocable love for Sam Winchester is going to die tonight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't look back in anger

**Author's Note:**

> my friend and I made this au up in her basement at one in the morning and then I decided to write it, so I hope it's coherent.
> 
> All you need to know is that John never went missing, and Dean never came and got Sam at Stanford.
> 
> also the title was stolen from the band Oasis.

It’s November 2nd, so something terrible is going to happen. A gorgeous woman with blonde curls and an irrevocable love for Sam Winchester is going to die tonight. And Sam will watch and he will weep as everything is torn away from him, because it’s November 2nd and because he dreamt it would be so.

Jessica Moore is burning alive on the ceiling, and it takes Sam a moment to realize this isn’t another nightmare. The smoke in his lungs is real, searing. The smell of burning flesh scalds in his nose and curls up in the bottom of his stomach, nauseating. He makes no move to escape. He screams things like _no_ and _jess_ and _please_ like they’re prayers. Like he’s on his knees, head bowed in the helpless shame of humanity, begging for pity.

He waits for the fire that has ripped him apart and stolen his insides to finish the job.

It’s Brady who pulls him out of the fire. Sam never asks what he was doing there. Sometimes he’ll ask him _why_ _why did you save me how could you_ , but Brady’s not around to answer because Sam left after that.

-

Sam makes a living the way they used to, stealing and hustling and squatting in old motels, but he doesn’t—can’t—hunt. He pops pills to numb the healing burns where the fire ate his skin; doesn’t stop after they reduce to puckered, white scars. He drinks to push Jessica out of his dreams. He hits up bars when he wants a fight. He dials John’s phone number. He dials Dean’s. Then he snaps his phone in half and throws it against the wall because _if you walk out the door, you better stay gone._

Sam walked out that door. He just wanted to be safe.

He dreams of a woman pounding on the window of an old house. He recognizes the tree in the front yard, knows it from somewhere. With a spark of familiar heroism, he thinks _I can save this woman._ He sketches the tree on a hotel stationary and his mind completes the picture; he remembers. He doesn’t save her.

He passes out on a grimy barroom floor instead, peanut shells poking his cheek.

In one week, he has three migraines. Watches three people get murdered in impossible ways. Two weeks later, a crying, shaking boy takes a knife held up with invisible strings to his own throat.

Sam buys a handgun with no bullets. Heavy and wrong in his unpracticed hand, he presses the muzzle to his temple, closes his eyes, and pretends.

A dark-haired woman in a nightgown gets dragged up a wall and pinned to the ceiling. Sam tries to close his eyes, shut it out, but the fire is as bright as the sun and it doesn’t blind him.

He punches a wall; breaks two knuckles.

A man shoots himself in a gun store. A woman burns herself alive at a gas station. A girl jumps off a dam, arms extending as if she thought she could fly.

Sam asks God to _please, make this stop_. Asks God _why are you doing this to me?_ Asks God _why are you mocking my faith?_ Tells God _I don’t believe in you anymore._

A hysterical man begging for his life is tied to a chair, and Dean shoots him square in the face. _I got no choice._ Sam doesn’t dwell.

A girl named Ava shows up on his doorstep and tells him he’s going to die. He says thank you, and she says _thanks for not thinking I’m nuts_ and _take care of yourself_ and _don’t die_ , and she doesn’t understand what he thanked her for.

Sam goes where he is supposed to, where Ava told him not to, and no one is there. No one attacks him, no one waits behind a locked door with a gun prepared to kill. He stays for hours, holds his breath, and every time he’s forced to take another, he tells himself this one will be the last.

No one comes.

Something wrong burns hot and alive inside him, rips through him and he seethes. He wants to hurt Ava. He wants to find her and knock out her teeth, tear out her hair.

He screams a broken, shredded sound that echoes through the trees. It’s followed by the too familiar whoosh and crackle that whisper _fire_ into an innocent night, stealing its darkness in flames. The building is burning, and Sam knows it was him. He watches, skin itching, chest heaving, until the sun licks sweat onto his neck and nothing remains but ash and smoke.

-

A yellow-eyed demon visits him in a dream, and Sam tells him, venom on his tongue, “You killed my girlfriend _._ ”

The demon smiles, says, “No, I didn’t. You did.”

Sam wants to scream, but he nods instead. He thinks about the death behind his eyelids and the fire in his fingertips. “What am I?” he asks.

“Useful,” the demon tells him, yellow eyes glinting in unseen light. “At least I’m hoping you will be.”

-

Sam watches himself as an infant, with drops of demon blood starkly wrong on his innocent lips. His little tongue laps them up, little mouth closes around them. His first and only thought is _oh._

_Better than mother’s milk._

-

It’s May 2nd, so something terrible is going to take its first breath.

Lilly and Andy and Ava are dead. Sam didn’t kill any of them. Yellow Eyes tells them only one can make it out alive, so Jake comes at Sam with his superhuman strength and a mission. Sam stands there with a rusted knife and two years’ worth of boiling anger, and watches him come closer.

Somehow the fight ends with Jake on the ground, grunting, half-conscious.

Sam looks at the knife in his hand, runs the pad of his thumb over the blade. He pictures blood—not his own, for once, not his own—running down it, pooling at the hilt, warm on his fingers.

“I’ve never killed a man,” Sam tells Jake, eyes still on this knife, a tool for survival, a tool for hunting, a tool for murder.

Jake coughs; rolls on his back but can’t move much otherwise. He asks in an unwavering voice, “Will you now?”

Sam considers this. He leans over Jake and looks him in the eyes. They flicker with pain and fear. Sam memorizes the firm spark of life behind them, and he plunges the knife into Jake’s chest. He jerks, gasps, twitches. Dark, warm blood flows from the hole in his chest, bubbles and gurgles out of his mouth. A puff of air wisps out of Jake’s mouth, and he stills with blank, dead eyes on Sam.

Sam’s soul splits open like bloated cattle and something dark and dangerous crawls out. It takes a deep breath, says hello to the world it is going to destroy. This is everything Sam never wanted to be and knew he truly was. He doesn’t push it down now, because it feels right, because it’s May 2nd and because his destiny said it would be so.

-

Sam sits by a fire that he started with a twitch of a finger, and plays with the power that is radiating through him. He can feel it like a force in his veins, like his whole body is a presence of energy, buzzing, cripplingly dark if he still wanted to be good. He notices a little, black beetle scuttling up his arm, and he watches it. He thinks of death and flicks a finger at it, and it stops, lifeless. It flings itself into the fire with Sam’s silent desire to see it burn.

The yellow-eyed demon comes to him when he nods off.

“I gotta say, Sam. I’m surprised,” he says, sitting across the glowing embers that bask his deceitful smile in light. “Haven’t been bettin’ on your horse for a while.”

Sam looks at the sky, stars hidden behind black clouds. “What does that mean?” he asks, voice rasping.

“Sam—Sammy—you were my favorite!” the demon croons, and the thing in Sam’s chest where his heart used to be clenches because no one has called him Sammy in somewhere near six years. “You were tough. You were smart. You were well-trained. Thought losing sweet little Jessica would put you back on track.”

Yellow Eyes shrugs, continues, “Didn’t turn out how I planned it. Her death made you bitter and angry and just _so_ _alone_.” His grin is mocking and full of mirth, and Sam wants rip it from his face and throw it into the flames.

“Wasn’t what I was looking for, but we can work with it. You can use that anger and that resentment to lead one hell of an army,” the demon chuckles, low and harsh, “but that’s later.”

Sam doesn’t know what to do with any of this information. “Why are you here?”

The demon leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees, as if coming close to share an intimate secret, “I need you to do me a favor.”

Sam thinks about saying _why in the hell would I do anything for you? You ruined my life you bled in my mouth you killed everyone you turned me into a monster._

Sam thinks about the nothing left he has to lose. He thinks about what he could gain. He thinks about the coldness in his chest and the heat in his nerves, and this eroding desire to fill the black void inside him with blood.

He says, “okay.”

-

Sam takes the Colt to the Devil’s Gate. Follows the demon’s instructions, is seconds away from opening it when he hears a sharp and familiar voice shout, “Hey!”

A sudden chill runs down his spine, and his breath catches in his throat.

“Drop that gun and face me,” the voice demands, and it’s not a shout this time, but a stern, even command, and Sam’s first reflex is to fight against it. His second is to say _yessir._

He tightens his grip, ducks his head, hiding behind his bangs, and turns slowly.

“Hey, he told you to drop the—Sam?”

Sam lifts his eyes and tilts his head, just a fraction, but keeps his expression dark and callous. Fifteen feet in front of him stand his brother and his father; stand his family and his childhood and his home. Sam is astonishingly unaffected.

Dean has grown out of boyhood. He still looks like Sam’s brother, but he also resembles a man that Sam never got to meet. Sam wonders how many lives Dean saved while Sam rotted in motel rooms and bars and watched people die. John looks old, worn down even more so than when Sam left. Sam thinks that might be his own doing, and a glow of brutal satisfaction makes his fingertips burn for action.

At the sight of him, Dean lowers his gun and John raises his. Sam still holds the colt tight in his fist.

“Sam, what are you doing?” Dean asks, small and lost, “I thought—you’re supposed to be…”

“Dean,” John warns, voice stern with a silent plea. Sam knows that voice, the one he used to scold Dean when he thought it was funny to provoke monsters.

_Don’t poke ‘cause they’ll bite._

It was worry and anger and hatred and knowledge—knowing evil, knowing a threat, recognizing it; and Sam thinks, _he knew._

He knew this whole time—

knew about the blood, his destiny, the evil in Sam.

_Did you even try to help me?_

An inferno like no other flares in Sam’s gut, and rage and hate for his father fill him so abruptly and so completely, he can feel it in every cell in his body. He could scream. He could kill. He could bring this world to ashes.

John keeps the muzzle of his gun pointed to his monster of a son, and Dean watches on in horror.

Sam sneers, twists his fingers in a harsh movement, and his father’s neck snaps. He crumples to the ground like a marionette doll whose strings were cut. Dean makes a sound like a wounded animal, and he looks at Sam with frenzied terror on his face.

“ _What the fuck did you do_?” Dean screams and he looks stuck between collapsing to his knees by his father’s corpse and attacking the brother who just orphaned them both.

The wrath in Sam’s bones sizzles but refuses to burn away; strong and fueling this growing power in him. His head pounds with the force of it, the wind whipping around them is blowing at near-hurricane strength, and Sam knows he’s causing it.

“I’m fulfilling my destiny, Dean!” he shouts over the rush of the wind.

Clouds overcast the sky, blocking out the light of the moon and the stars, and Sam can’t see the expression on Dean’s face.

“What are you talking about?”

Sam laughs humorlessly, something dead crawling up his throat and out his mouth. “This is who I’m meant to be! I’m a killer. I’m a _thing_.”

“What—that’s bullshit, Sam!” Dean’s voice is angry, grinding against gravel, so much deeper than Sam remembers it. He also sounds confused, lost. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Sam spits, throwing his arms out to his sides, “It doesn’t fucking matter anymore because this is all I am now, Dean, this is all the fuck I have.”

His blood runs cold and there are trees on fire and it’s raining.

“And I don’t resent it.”

The wind picks up dramatically, leaves and branches and pieces of stone fly past them, hitting Dean and making him bleed while Sam, eye of the storm, is left without a scratch. Dean struggles to stay standing.

“And I’m not scared of it.”

He turns his back to Dean and plunges the Colt into the Gate like a stake to the heart, twists it hard and feels it snap into place. The lock clicks and groans, stone grinds together, the earth under his feet trembles in fear and anticipation. The doors to Hell are unchained in a long, dramatic gesture of suspense.

Sam spins on his heel, faces his brother and snarls, “I can rule the fucking world, Dean,” as the doors swing open and all of Hell escapes behind him. Smoke and death and evil meet his skin as the ugly things kept hidden in the basement flea past him, free. The sounds of Hell’s tearing screams and mangled laughter get caught in the wind.

“And this will be my army.” Sam can’t stop the cold smile that finds his lips. His hair is whipping around his face, and his fists are clenched tight at his sides. He is a pillar of sheer force with the whole of Hell at his back, and he is no longer just a boy. He is an entity of pure destruction.

Sam laughs, loud and sharp and mean, as malice and gratification boil under his skin, threatening to take control. He lifts his head to watch the show. Streaks of electricity skitter across the clouds of demons. He can feel their anger inside himself, somehow, and it feeds the power pulsing through him.

Trees are falling, crashing to the ground and striking the air with cracking echoes. Uncontrollable fires are building despite the torrential rainfall. Dean is soaked to the bone and Sam is bone dry. Translucent figures of dead men and women rush past Sam as they walk out of Hell. The world could be ending, for all anyone knew.

“Sam, _stop this!_ ” Dean screeches, and Sam’s gaze snaps back to him.

Dean is trembling, pinned against a headstone. His eyes flash in horror to the sky above, where every living nightmare flies over his head.

“Why?” Sam asks him. He doesn’t shout, but his icy voice travels loud and clear between them.

Dean doesn’t answer, looking at Sam like he’s scared of him, and Sam thinks _you should be_.

Sam raises his hand, palm out, all his power and force and energy focused into it, to Dean. Something dirty but not quite hate rises in his chest; it’s enough to warrant this, killing his brother.

He thinks about how he could kill Dean. He thinks about every possible way he could kill a person, and how he will eventually use every single one. He thinks about feeling alive again, after so fucking long with this rotting, dead thing in his chest.

His hand closes into a fist and Dean screams in agony, back arching, head thrown back, and Sam doesn’t know what he’s doing but he doesn’t stop. Hell is still open and spitting out creatures behind him, and he revels in the feeling of being their savior.

“Why are you doing this?” Dean shouts, wrecked.

Sam loosens his fist, and Dean relaxes a fraction. “I killed her.”

“Killed who?”

Sam shakes his head like he’s trying to knock something loose. _I killed her she’s gone it was my fault and I had no one. No one no one no one._

For a second Sam thinks something broke in his mind; there’s a sound like something cracking and crumbling that he doesn’t recognize. Then he realizes the ground is splitting apart in the space between him and his brother. A black open void right under his feet; a hungry mouth begging to be fed.

He shrieks, rabid and broken and bitter and evil, “I killed her, and I didn’t stop there! _I will kill everyone_!”

 “You going to kill me, huh? Your own brother?” Dean asks, sneering, like he’s daring Sam to.

And Sam thinks about being alone again, after _so fucking long._

He blinks.

He craves the feel of blood on his hands. He wants to see the light flicker out of terrified eyes.

He wants to fit into his own skin. He wants to be a monster.

He can let his brother go, though.

“No,” he says, “No, Dean, I’m not going to kill you.”

The rain hits wet on his face. He can hear the stone doors behind him closing of their own accord, shutting away the underworld. He lets the power ebb away, just a little. Dean can move again.

Sam set the world on fire. He drops his hand.

Dean raises his gun and shoots Sam in the chest three times.

 

 

end

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, guys. Sorry about the run-on sentences.


End file.
